Natural Language Input: Maternal Education, Socioeconomic Deprivation, and Language Outcomes in Typically Developing Children

Preliminary feasibility and effectiveness of a novel community language intervention for preschool children in the United Kingdom

BACKGROUND

Very young children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds often show poorer language development. Whilst there have been attempts to provide early intervention programmes, these sometimes miss the most disadvantaged groups.

AIMS

This report presents preliminary feasibility and effectiveness data for a novel language intervention designed for parents of toddlers in the United Kingdom.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

In total, 43 UK families of 2-4-year-olds were recruited to the study, half of whom completed an 8-week course (Tots Talking) focussed on parent interaction, and half of whom acted as wait-list controls.

RESULTS AND OUTCOMES

Results suggest that such programmes are feasible for families with 86% staying in the intervention. In addition, greater changes in underlying communication skills such as joint attention and gesture were evident compared to wait-list controls.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

We conclude that pre-verbal skills may be more important to measure as initial outcomes than language or vocabulary change in this population.

WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS

What is already known on the subject Children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds are at higher risk of communication difficulties and there is a need for community intervention programmes for very young children. What this study adds This study suggests that such programmes can be feasible and effective, but that very early/basic communicative skills (such as joint attention) may be boosted first rather than language or vocabulary. What are the clinical implications of this work? Children's centres and other community services could feasibly run short parent facing courses emphasising contingent communication in low SES families and other diverse groups. These may be more successful run with younger preschoolers. Joint attention may be a better focus of intervention before expecting vocabulary or language change. Community health professionals may find this information useful in referring and supporting families in need.

Associations between responsive parental behaviours in infancy and toddlerhood, and language outcomes at age 7 years in a population-based sample

BACKGROUND

A wealth of evidence supports the important role high-quality parent-child interactions play in children's early language acquisition. However, the impact on later language outcomes remains unclear.

AIMS

To examine the associations between responsive parental behaviours across the early years and child language outcomes at age 7 years with families from an Australian longitudinal cohort study (N = 1148, 50% female).

METHODS & PROCEDURES

At child ages 12, 24 and 36 months, parents completed a self-report measure of responsive parental behaviours. Child language was directly assessed at age 7 using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, 4th edition (CELF-4), Australian Standardisation. Linear regression was used to examine associations between responsive parental behaviours from 12 to 36 months (consistently high, inconsistent and consistently low responsive parental behaviours at the three time points) and language scores at age 7 years. Adjusted models were run, including the following potential confounders: child sex; birth weight; birth order; maternal education; socio-economic disadvantage; non-English-speaking background; family history of speech-language problems; mother's vocabulary score; maternal mental health score; and mother's age at birth of child. A final adjusted model was run, including the potential confounder variables as well as adjusting for children's earlier language skills.

OUTCOMES & RESULTS

Linear regression results showed children with parents who rated high on responsive parental behaviours at all three time points had higher mean language scores at age 7 than children whose parents reported low responsive parental behaviours across early childhood. This association attenuated after adjusting for earlier child language skills.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

Findings support the consistent use of responsive parental behaviours across the very early years of childhood to support long-term language outcomes. Findings also suggest that models of surveillance and support which monitor and assist families at multiple time-points over the early years are likely to be most effective for preventing ongoing language difficulties.

WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS

What is already known on this subject There is extensive evidence consistently demonstrating the important contribution of aspects of parent-child interaction, specifically responsive parental behaviours, to children's language development. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge Understanding the cumulative benefit of responsive parent-child interactions across the very early years may help to inform preventive interventions and service delivery models for supporting young children's language development. This study demonstrates in a large, population-based cohort the contribution of consistency of responsive parental behaviours during infancy and toddlerhood to school-age language outcomes, accounting for other child, family and environmental factors. Capturing regular parent behaviours via self-report during the early years may be a more efficient and less costly method than parent-child interaction observations to monitor the home language-learning environment during routine developmental checks. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Findings support the need for surveillance of children and families in the early years, ensuring that intervention occurs when families need it most, that is, support is responsive to changing needs and that nuanced advice and support strategies are provided to activate positive developmental cascades. Capturing both parent behaviours and child language may assist clinicians to identify those families who may benefit from parent-child interaction intervention.

Cumulative Risk and Externalizing Behaviors during Infancy in a Predominantly Latine Sample

Externalizing behavior problems are among the top mental health concerns in early childhood, and many parenting interventions have been developed to address this issue. To better understand predictors of parenting intervention outcomes in high-risk families, this secondary data analysis evaluated the moderating effect of cumulative risk on child externalizing behaviors, parenting skills, and intervention dropout after completion of a home-based adaptation of the child-directed interaction phase of parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) called the Infant Behavior Program (IBP). The participants included 58 toddlers (53% male; average age of 13.5 months; and 95% Hispanic or Latine) who were part of a larger randomized control trial in which families were randomly assigned to receive the IBP or treatment as usual (TAU). Cumulative risk was found to moderate the effect of the intervention group on child externalizing behaviors such that the participants in the intervention group with higher cumulative risk scores had greater reductions in externalizing behaviors. A potential explanation for these unexpected findings may be that the obstacles to treatment that were previously imposed by comorbid risk factors (i.e., lack of transportation, time commitment, and language barriers) were adequately addressed such that the families who most needed the intervention were able to remain fully engaged.

Automated measures of speech content and speech organization in schizophrenia: Test-retest reliability and generalizability across demographic variables

Technological advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing have increased efficiency of assessing speech content and speech organization in schizophrenia. Despite these developments, there has been little focus on the psychometrics of these approaches. Using two common assessments, the current study addressed this gap by: 1) measuring test-retest reliability; and 2) assessing whether speech content and/or speech organization generalize across demographics. To test these aims, we examined psychometric properties of the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC), a speech content measure, and the Coh-Metrix, a speech organization measure. Across baseline to six month (n = 101) and baseline to one year (n = 47) narrative speech samples, we generally observed fair reliability for speech content measures and fair to good reliability for speech organization measures. Regarding demographics, multiple speech indices varied by race, income, and education. The lack of excellent reliability scores for speech indices holds important implications for examining speech variables in clinical trials and highlights the dynamic nature of speech. This work illustrates the importance of designing speech content and speech organization measures with external validity across demographic factors. Future studies examining speech in schizophrenia should account for potential biases against demographic groups introduced by linguistic analysis tools.

Effects of multilingualism on Australian infants' language environments in early childhood education centers

This study investigates differences in the language environments experienced by multilingual and monolingual infants in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. The Language Environment Analysis (LENA) technology was used to collect day-long audio-recordings from 181 one-year-old infants (age range from 12 to 21 months). We examined whether infants' multilingual status predicts the amount of educators' language input (adult word count, AWC), child vocalizations (CVC) and conversational turns (CTC), as well as interaction effects on AWC, CVC and CTC of infants' multilingual status and other infant, home and ECEC characteristics. Multilevel mixed effects models revealed no main effect of infants' multilingual status on the language environment outcome variables. Instead, infant gender significantly predicted adult word count, with female infants hearing more words from educators than male infants. There was a significant interaction effect between the infants' multilingual status and both their age and length of time in an ECEC setting on child vocalizations. While monolingual infants produced more vocalizations as their age increased, multilingual infants did not show this increase in vocalizations with age. Further, the difference between monolingual and multilingual children's vocalizations decreased as the length of time in ECEC increased. There were no significant predictors of conversational turns. Findings from this study suggest that early childhood educators do not adjust their talk according to the multilingual status of the infants. However, multilingual infants do not increase their vocalizations as their age increases to the same extent as do their monolingual peers. The interaction effect between multilingualism and the length of ECEC attendance also implies that ECEC environments may be particularly beneficial for supporting multilingual infants' vocalizations. This study highlights the need to provide pedagogical support to educators to help them to encourage multilingual infants' vocalizations in ECEC settings.

Socioeconomic status correlates with measures of Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system: a meta-analysis

Using a meta-analytic approach, we evaluate the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and children's experiences measured with the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system. Our final analysis included 22 independent samples, representing data from 1583 children. A model controlling for LENA^TM measures, age and publication type revealed an effect size of r _z = .186, indicating a small effect of SES on children's language experiences. The type of LENA metric measured emerged as a significant moderator, indicating stronger effects for adult word counts than child vocalization counts. These results provide important evidence for the strength of association between SES and children's everyday language experiences as measured with an unobtrusive recording analyzed automatically in a standardized fashion.

Measuring English Narrative Microstructure in Preschool Dual Language Learners

PURPOSE

The purpose of the study was to examine the change in specific English microstructure features according to language ability in preschool Spanish-English dual language learners.

METHOD

We collected English narratives from 22 Spanish-English dual language learners with typical language development (TD) and 22 Spanish-English dual language learners with developmental language disorder (DLD) at the beginning and end of their first year in Head Start. Children came from Spanish-speaking homes and were exposed to English and Spanish in their preschool classrooms. We analyzed children's use of English microstructure across time using the Narrative Assessment Protocol.

RESULTS

Both groups showed improvement in overall English microstructure use, although children with TD made greater gains than children with DLD. Phrase structure (noun phrases, coordinating conjunctions, and prepositional phrases) increased in both groups, but more so in children with TD than with DLD. Sentence structure (compound, complex, negative, and interrogative sentences) increased in both groups. Verb use, noun use (Tier 2 nouns and nouns marked with plural and possessive endings), and modifiers (adverbs and adjectives) neither changed across time nor differed between groups.

CONCLUSIONS

Spanish-English dual language learners who attend Head Start and come from Spanish-speaking homes, regardless of language ability, may not readily acquire verbs, nouns, and modifiers during their first year of formal English exposure, suggesting that they would benefit from explicit instruction in these areas. Preschool Spanish-English dual language learners with DLD may make less progress than their peers with TD in phrase structure use, indicating that explicit instruction in this microstructure feature may be beneficial for children with DLD.

Evaluation of the language development of children with cochlear implant users living in a multilingual environment

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the effect of second language exposure on Turkish speaking skills in cochlear implant (CI) users.

METHODS

Children living in mono and bilingual families, who underwent unilateral cochlear implant due to congenital severe to profound, or profound hearing loss, were examined. The fifty six children with a chronological age younger than 8 and a language age of 2-6 years were included the study. The Denver II Developmental Screening Test was used for identifying of pre-implant speech and development. The duration of implant use was also documented. Languages spoken at the patients' homes were divided into 4 categories: T/K: Predominantly Turkish/Kurdish, K/T: Predominantly Kurdish/Turkish, T/T: Just Turkish, A/T: Predominantly Arabic/Turkish. The CAP (Categories of Auditory Performance), SIR (Speech Intelligibility Rating), The Turkish Version Test of The Early Language Development (TELD-3:T),. The IT-MAIS (Infant Toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale), MUSS (Meaningful Use of Speech Scale) were used to evaluate the language development of the patients. Changes in IT-MAIS and MUSS scores in the last two years were also evaluated.

RESULTS

The all children received their implants before age of 6 years. The average duration of cochlear implant use of children was 38,43 ± 11,64 months. The mean pre-implant speech age was 6,8 ± 2,13 months. There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of the CAP and SIR scores. In TELD-3:T scores, there was no significant difference between the groups except for the receptive raw scores. The Arabic/Turkish group had significantly lower receptive raw scores. This group also had significantly lower mother educational level. In IT-MAIS and MUSS scores, no significant difference was found between the groups.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study supports the opinion that exposure to a second language at home does not affect the acquisition of the language of education in children using CI.

Parental Reports of Preschoolers' Lexical and Syntactic Development: Validation of the CDI-III for European Portuguese

This study presents the validation analysis of the European Portuguese version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory III (CDI-III-PT). The CDI-III-PT is a parental report measure allowing researchers to assess expressive vocabulary and the syntactic abilities of children aged 2;6–4;0. In this study, we present a version comprising a lexical subscale which follows the Swedish adaptation and an original syntactic subscale allowing us to include language-specific structures. The reports of 739 children were collected; in addition, a standardized measure of language was also administered to a sub-sample of these children and the reports of preschool teachers were collected for another sub-sample. The results indicate a high internal consistency of the lexical and syntactic subscales. As for sociodemographic variables often found to be predictors of language development, as measured by this type of instrument, the results indicate that age and maternal education are significant predictors of the scores, and that first-born children attain higher scores in vocabulary than later born children, but no significant gender differences were found. The scores of the CDI-III-PT are positively correlated with the ones obtained in the standardized language measure, thus supporting their validity. A high agreement between the reports of parents and teachers was also found. These findings indicate that the CDI-III-PT has adequate psychometric properties and that it can be a useful tool for research and clinical practice. The age-based norms that are now provided can be used to evaluate whether a child is performing poorly compared to their peers.

Adaptación y normativización del Inventario del Desarrollo Comunicativo Mac Arthur Bates (CDI-Forma II) al español rioplatense

En este trabajo se presenta la adaptación al español rioplatense de la Forma II de los Inventarios del Desarrollo Comunicativo Mac Arthur-Bates (CDI), destinado a evaluar el vocabulario expresivo y las habilidades morfosintácticas entre los 16 y los 30 meses. Se expone, en primer lugar, el procedimiento de adaptación del instrumento. En segundo lugar, se presentan algunas evidencias de su fiabilidad y validez, al tiempo que se describen las principales tendencias evolutivas encontradas tras la aplicación del inventario a una muestra de 726 madres y/o padres de niños y niñas de las edades arriba mencionadas. Los resultados indican, en primer lugar, que   la versión rioplatense del CDI presenta elevados niveles de consistencia interna y de representatividad de sus ítems léxicos. En segundo lugar, las trayectorias del desarrollo léxico y gramatical observadas se han mostrado sensibles a los cambios en relación con la edad, de modo comparable al de otras adaptaciones del CDI. Al mismo tiempo, se han encontrado correlaciones moderadas y significativas entre el aumento del vocabulario y la complejidad morfosintáctica, aún después de controlar el efecto de la edad. Por último, se ha observado un efecto significativo del nivel educativo materno sobre el tamaño del léxico expresivo y la longitud media de las primeras frases. Se concluye que la versión rioplatense del CDI representa una contribución necesaria y promisoria para la evaluación del lenguaje temprano en el contexto sudamericano.

Sociodemographic and Pre-Linguistic Factors in Early Vocabulary Acquisition

Here, we studied the beginnings of language development, jointly assessing two groups of precursors, sociodemographic and pre-linguistic, that have previously been studied separately. Thus, the general objective of this study was to explore which factors best explained the acquisition of initial expressive vocabulary. The sample consisted of 504 participants from Catalan-speaking homes with ages ranging between 10 and 18 months. The data were obtained through the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MCB-CDIs). Vocabulary development shows a lexical spurt at 17 months. Regression analyses show that pre-linguistic factors have more explanatory power of than sociodemographic ones. Within the sociodemographic variables, age, birth order and birth weight explain part of the vocabulary variance. With respect to pre-linguistic variables, imitation, late gestures and phrase comprehension are predictors of the initial vocabulary acquisition. Specifically, imitation and late gestures were the pre-linguistic behaviours that made it possible to distinguish between children with higher and lower levels of vocabulary. We discussed these findings in relation to their relevance for language acquisition and for the early assessment of linguistic competence.